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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 






HUMANITY THE ONLY TRUE DIVINITY. 

BY WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM.* / 

The Earl of Chatham wrote the following " Address to the 
People of England." It was originally printed in "the " London 
Journal," in 1733. i 

Gentlemen, — Whoever takes " a view of the world will find 
that what the greatest part of mankind have agreed to call reli- 
gion has been only some outward exercise esteemed efficient to 
work a reconciliation with God. It has moved them to build 
temples, slay victims, offer 'up sacrifices, to fast and feast, to peti- 
tion and thank, to laugh and cry, to sing and sigh, by turns ; but 
it has not yet been found sufficient to induce them to break off an 
amour, to make restitution of ill-gotten wealth, or to bring the 
passions and appetites to reasonable subjection. Differ as much 
as they may in opinion concerning what they ought to believe, or 
after what manner they are to serve God, as they call it, yet they 
all agree in gratifying their appetites. The same passions reign 
eternally in all countries and in al ages : Jew and Mohammedan, 
the Christian and the Pagan, the Tartar and the Indian, — all 
kinds of men, who differ in almost everything else, — universally 
agree with regard to their passions. If there be any difference 
among them, it is this, — that, the more superstitious, they are 
always the more vicious ; and, the more they believe, the less 
they practice. This is a melancholy consideration to a good 
mind ; it is a most terrible truth ; and certainly, above ail things, 
worth our while to inquire into. We will, therefore, probe the 
wound, and search it to the bottom : we will lay the ax to the 
root of the tree, and show you the true reason why men go on in 
sinning and repenting, repenting and sinning again, through the 
whole course of their lives ; and the reason is, because they have 
been taught, most wickedly taught, that religion and virtue are 
two things absolutely distinct ; that the deficiency of the one 
might be supplied by the sufficiency of the other ; and that what 
you want in virtue you must make up in religion. But this reli- 
gion — so dishonorable to God, and so pernicious to men — is 
worse than Atheism : for Atheism, though it takes away one 
great motive to support virtue in distress, yet it furnishes no man 
with arguments to be vicious ; but superstition, or what the 
world means by religion, is the greatest possible encouragement 
to vice, by setting up something as religion which shall atone 
and commute for the want of virtue. This is establishing in- 

* William Pitt, it will be remembered, was a true friend of the American 
Colonies in those " times that tried men's souls." Macaulay says he was 
" the first Englishman of his time, and he made England the first country in 
the world." Bancroft declares, that, of the English nation, he was "the 
noblest representative and type." 

Copies of this paper may be obtained at the Office of The Radical at 
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iquity by a law, the highest law ; by authority, the highest 
authority, — that of God himself. We complain of the vices of 
the world, and of the wickedness of men, without searching into 
the true cause. It is not because they are wicked by nature, for 
that is both false and impious ; but because, to serve the pur- 
poses of their pretended soul-savers, they have been carefully 
taught that they are wicked by nature, and cannot help continu- 
ing so. It would have been impossible for men to have been 
both religious and vicious, had religion been made to consist 
wherein alone it does consist, and had they been always taught 
that true religion is the practice of virtue, in obedience to the 
will of God, who presides over all things, and will finally make 
every man happy who does his duty. This single opinion in reli- 
gion, that things are so well made by the Deity, that virtue is its 
own reward, and that happiness will ever arise from acting ac- 
cording to the reason of things ; or that God, ever wise and 
good, will provide some extraordinary happiness for those who 
suffer for virtue's sake, — is enough to support a man under all 
difficulties, to keep him steady to his duty, and to enable him to 
stand as firm as a rock amidst all the charms of pleasure, profit, 
and honor. But this religion of reason, which all men are capa- 
ble of, has been neglected and condemned, and another set up, 
the natural consequences of which have puzzled men's under- 
standings, and debauched their morals,, more than all the lewd 
poets and Atheistical philosophers that ever infested the world ; 
for, instead of being taught that religion consists in action, or 
obedience to the eternal moral law of God, we have been most 
gravely and venerably told that it consists in the belief of cer- 
tain opinions which we could form no ideas of ; or which were 
contrary to the clear perceptions of our minds ; or which had no 
tendency to make us either wiser or better ; or, which is much 
worse, had a manifest tendency to make us wicked and immoral. 
And this belief, — this impious belief, — arising from imposition 
on one side, and from want of examination on the other, has 
been called by the sacred name of religion ; whereas, real, gen- 
uine religion consists in knowledge and obedience. We know 
there is a God, and we know his will, which is, that we should 
do all the good we can ; and we are assured, from his perfections, 
that we shall find our good in so doing. And what would we 
have more ? Are we, after so much inquiry, and in an age full 
of liberty, children still ? And cannot we be quiet unless we 
have holy romances, sacred fables, and traditionary tales, to 
amuse us in an idle hour, and give rest to our souls, when our 
follies and vices will not suffer us to rest ? 

You have been taught, indeed, that right belief, or orthodoxy, 
will, like charity, cover a multitude of sins. But be not deceived : 
belief of, or mere assent to, the truth of propositions upon evi- 
dence, is not a virtue, nor unbelief a vice. Faith is not a volun- 
tary act. It does not depend upon the will. Every one must 
believe or disbelieve, whether he will or not, according as evi- 
dence appears to him. If, therefore, men, however dignified or 



'distinguished, command us to believe, they are guilty of the 
highest folly and absurdity, because it is out of our power ; but 
if they command us to believe, and annex rewards to belief, and 
severe penalties to unbelief, then are they most wicked and im- 
moral, because they annex rewards and punishments to what is 
involuntary, and, therefore, neither rewardable nor punishable. 
It appears, then, very plainly unreasonable and unjust to com- 
mand us to believe any doctrine, good or bad, wise or unwise : 
but when men command us to believe opinions which have not 
only no tendency tP promote virtue, but which are allowed to 
•commute or atone for the want of it, then are they arrived at 
the utmost reach of impiety ; then is their iniquity full ; then 
have they finished the misery and completed the destruction of 
poor mortal men. By betraying the interest of virtue they have 
undermined and sapped the foundation of all human happiness, 
■and how treacherously and dreadfully have they betrayed it ! 
A gift well applied ; the chattering of some unintelligible sounds 
called creeds ; and unfeigned assent and consent to whatever the 
Church enjoins ; religious worships and consecrated feasts ; re- 
penting on a death-bed ; pardons rightly sued out, and absolu- 
tions authoritatively given, — have done more towards making and 
continuing men vicious than all their natural passions and infi- 
delity put together : for infidelity can only take away the super- 
natural rewards of virtue ; but these superstitious opinions and 
practices have not only turned the scene, and made men lose 
sight of the natural rewards of it, but have induced them to 
think, that, were there no hereafter, vice would be preferable to 
virtue, and that they still increase in happiness as they increase 
in wickedness. And this they have been taught in several reli- 
gious discourses and sermons delivered by men whose orthodoxy 
was never doubted ; particularly by a late reverend prelate, I 
•mean Bishop Atterbury, in his sermon on these words : " If in 
this life only be hope, then we are of all men most miserable," 
where vice and faith ride most lovingly and triumphantly to- 
gether : but these doctrines of the natural excellency of vice, 
the efficacy of a right belief, the dignity of atonements and pro- 
pitiations, have, besides depriving us of the native beauty and 
charms of honesty, and thus cruelly stabbing virtue to the heart, 
raised and diffused among men a certain unnatural passion which 
we shall call religious hatred, — a hatred constant, deep-rooted, 
and immortal. All other passions rise and fall, die and revive 
again : but this of religious and pious hatred rises and grows 
•every day stronger upon the mind as we grow more religious ; 
because we hate, for God's sake, for our soul's sake, and ior the 
^sake of those poor souls, too, who have the misfortune not to 
-believe as we do. And can we, in so good a cause, hate too 
.much ? The more thoroughly we hate, the better we are ; and 
the more mischief we do to the bodies and estates of those infi- 
dels and heretics, the more do we show our love to God. This 
is religious zeal, and this has been called divinity ; but remember 
ihat the only true divinity is humanity. 



The Radical; 

A Magazine issued Monthly at 25 Bromjield St., Boston;. 

The present is the time to subscribe for The Radical. A 
new volume begins with this number. The proprietors make- 
bold to say that it is a Magazine well deserving the attention of 
all. They say this upon the strength of those who contribute to 
its pages, and as the testimony its present list of readers freely 
offers. There is no other journal issued monthly which endeavors, 
to treat the subject of religion from the same intellectual view, — 
that of untrammeled observation and experience. It is devoted 
to the study of the religious sentiment as the basis and support 
of character. If it does not enlist as a special advocate in the- 
several reforms of the hour, it is not from want of sympathy 
with the aims of many of them, but because it perceives the 
deeper significance of philosophy and religion to- the free growth 
and development of man. Our age is mainly exercised in the- 
amelioration of outward conditions. This is a costly method, for 
it does not relate itself primarily to character. It is not possible- 
to preserve even the best extemporized condition of society with, 
the' strong arm of the law. There is need of a higher, deeper,, 
broader development of personal character. Life is this dream, — 
made real within the soul of each. It is the mission of religion to » 
effect this personal elevation to inward power, — to the conscious 
nobility of the free soul. As character prevails in a community, 
the selfish, grasping, mean displays of neighbor against neighbor, . 
which the reforms can but regulate, disappear. 

The age needs to be redeemed from a necessity for its mad. 
contentions for " rights." This strife is interminable. It needs , 
the ideal of a new world. It needs repose in the securities of 
the religious sentiment. The Radical hopes to contribute to> 
this deliverance. 



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